Actually DHL delivered everything very quickly and the box wasn't mangled like they usually are.Note to self - Use DHL

They delivered 14 kilos of beautiful water cooling parts that were packed

so well by EKWB that I swore there had to be something missing.

The box was like DR who's tartus, bigger on the inside than the outside.

I owe my incredible thanks to EK for supporting The Metallica Build!

I dug into the boxes to see what was there and I found two of these radiators.

What the heck Is a coolstream PE? I opened the box and wondered where were all the Logo's? Only a small EK emblem by the water connections. Where did these shrouds come from on the headers? I had originally requested 480 XT's because I wanted a thinner Rad for room. Well After all this time has passed, they no longer carry them and recommended 480 XTX's well they are a little thicker than I was looking for but ok I'll take those. That's not what I got. I did a quick check at Performance pcs and these don't exist? It finally hit me that these are a brand new design - COOL

They really cleaned these up. In my opinion these are much better looking radiator and only 40mm thick which was exactly what I was looking for. I really, really do like these! I know the trend is very Fat Radiators. That's not what this build is about. if I can't cool two cards and a 4770K with two 480 radiators I'll be damned! Here is a link for anyone that wants to look at the spec's

The delays I had waiting for these EK parts was mostly due to all the barrage of new products that came into the market in the last six months. EKWB had to put customers ahead of me and I applaud that, because they are doing me a major favor with there support. This really worked out in my favor! I got the cool new radiators, I was able to switch from 2 - GTX 680's to 2 - GTX 770's. There isn't really much difference in these cards that you couldn't get from overclocking. I do prefer to be on the newer 770 software and hopefully it's better for EK to show off their newest stuff! They also kicked in some extra fittings and 4 way fan splitters, to simplify the wiring.

I was having trouble with light for pictures tonight, so I'll pick this show and tell back up tomorrow evening. I was playing with taking pictures through the radiators ( easily amused ) ha ha

I was able to get a few more pictures this evening. Amazingly I haven't even got all my boxes open yet, because I wanted to get Pictures as I open them and the sun Is starting to go down so early.

These GTX 770 water Blocks are a serious chunk of metal. It almost seems they would cool the cards without water at all. For at least 30 seconds anyway. EK has been listening to the customers wanting to get away from the crop circles so theyare offering these CSQ models with the clean look.

I always looked at build logs and people were showing off all their all their new hardware. I know it can get boring, but when you get a bunch of awesome new parts you get pretty excitedand you want to show them off to your friends. Hey your my friends, no one else could put up with me!

Also I was playing around with some piping options. The plan is to hard pipe this with shiny copper. This is another possible option that I like. Using some of the new acrylic tubing with cut brass rings over the tubing. What do you think?

Thanks for checking out our build. I can start making a little faster progress now.

There's no way around it, Some days Modding is just a lot of work. Saturday was not one of those days. I have a big pile of parts to play with, no one to bug me, except those voices in my head - Shut up , I got it! I was happily assembling all my prepainted fans for the upper 480 radiator. This is a 900D so everything should bolt right in place. Ha ha ha ha - shut up I got it! Ignorance is bliss or is it? It never occurred to me that people don't put the water connections in the front of the case. I have a total disrespect for drive bays and the damn connections are going in the front, The fact that is doesn't fit is irrelevant. A bit of cutting took care of the offending case material that should have never been there in the first place.

Another rookie moment. I bought the cute gold pump dress up kit. That would be great, but those don't work on the EK pump top I have. That just as well, It turns out that the pump Is going down in the basement. Some other time maybe? The EK pump top looks better anyway.

The water cooling part of this build should provide a lot of Entertainment for the veteran water coolers! Shut up I got it! Actually I used to do a lot of boiler work and my loops had thousands of feet of piping. Parts of that translate here, but there is no substitute for experience! Bring on the water cooling 101 or just talk amongst yourselves. he he he

The original plan for this build was hard piped copper, all shiny and pretty. First I want to try something with the acrylic tubing with cut brass rings on the outside. In the pictures I don't have the rings fixed yet, so they are not spaced perfectly.

I ran that pipe right under the fans to get over the drive bay cover. This thing is enough of a jig saw puzzle already! It would be nice to have a few things out of the way. Originally I was going to mount the pump to the midplate in the background. I decided I wanted to mount the reservoir on stilts, with no other mounting. I temporarily used the SLI fittings I had and EEL is shipping me some proper fittings. I really like the look of it. This required me to move the pump to the bottom so it would be below the Res.

This allowed me to pipe straight out the bottom of the res directly into the pump inlet.

I got the upper radiator piped fairly tight to the top, so I'll still have a few drive bays left.

I've got a bit more done, but I need to tie up some loose ends and then I can get some pictures.

Ok the saga continues. In the last episode onevoicewild had become jealous of alpenwassers beautiful copper work in His reservoir! It wasn't that he was trying to outdo him, but that onevoicewild had the same disabling copper addiction. Fortunately the ONE still has a large supply of copper to feed this foolish obsession for all things shiny.

Just to change things up, I used the mouse sander for the initial sanding. This is the first time I have used it for this build. My neighbor gave it to me and I was starting to feel guilty for not using it.

After that 400,800,1200,2000 and then Mothers mag and aluminum polish. I took extra time polishing this, because it will beunder water so the shinier the better. That's what I tell myself anyway.

This actually looks a lot better than the pictures can show. These low light conditions are when you really need a top notch camera. I have a fairly good point and shoot, but there are times when it falls short.

Well there is 18 hour of my life I'll never get back. It was actually good, because I'm waiting on parts.I hated to do this but I only have enough money to get 1 of the 2 GPU's I need, so I ordered one so I can finish the piping. I need to drill 2 more holes in the midplate and I need at least one card to help locate where to drill. It figures that the card got in town yesterday but they were in no hurry to actually get it to me grrrrr. Oh well Monday I'll get a new toy to play with.

The Clowns at the postal service finally decided to deliver my GPU. Ahh there is nothing like new toys. No it's not a Titan or the next thing that will replace it. Two of these are much fasted than I am. How many frames a second do you need to play Farmville ? Dx

Maybe it's just me, but this card is kind off an ugly duckling. I applaud EVGA though, They make a version of this same card with the Titan cooler on it for $50.00 dollars more.This is their highest clocked GTX 770 at a better price without the unneeded cooler, so it's a perfect candidate for a water cooling conversion. I had to take it for a test drive before I voided the warranty, just to make sure I didn't have a brick. It worked well and my 800D was pissed off when I repossessed it.

They say that the water block probably weighs more than the original heat sink. On this card I'm not so sure? This has a serious heavy heat sink. Apparently cooling all the other chips isn't a high priority. The thermal pads push up against the plastic bottom of the heat sink. What is the heat transfer rate of plastic? Well their the ones warranting it and I do really feel this model was designed with water conversion in mind.Now if they could just sell us a card with no heat sink at all for a reduced price. And reduce it even further because they know they don't have to carry any warranty on the card.

Once I had the first Card in place, I was able to continue more of the piping. I'm really liking the way it looks. I had to trim some of the hidden Acrylic that covers the drive bays. With the reservoir In the way, it barely comes out, but barely is enough.I pity the fool that ends up with this when I pass on! They will need an engineering degree to figure out how it all goes together.

Ok I was short a couple of fittings for the water cooling and while they were coming in I decided I would Mod the Ram to keep busy. What the Heck was I thinking. Keep busy for 4 days. Anytime the parts count on a minor mod is over 40 you should really reconsider. I really Love the Corsair Dominator Platinum but they have been around for awhile and I needed a little extra? who the hell am I kidding I needed a lot extra. I have taken some major risks and have been blessed with luck almost every time and Like a drunken fool I stumbled back to the bar for more abuse. I don't have the drill press anymore so I made a little Jig based on a Waynio Idea, to help keep the 40 holes inline as much as I could.

I decided I wanted to polish the tubes, Inside and out. What kind of people polish the inside of tubes - Sick people lol . I used Q Tips with metal polish on a drill and it would only fit inside if I spun it in with polish. The cool thing was I held the part with a rag and if I squeezed it, the Q Tip would spin on the inside and if I let off it spun on the outside. Polishing at 1000 RPM is a real luxury!

I know what your thinking - I wonder if I could do that on my ears? what you weren't thinking that? you puss, real men shave with a blow tourch!

Ok on to the Glamor shots or the what the hack has he done now shots, depending on your point of view. Some one was telling me to do something subtle. Mahhaaaaa Sorry It's not in me!

Well time to get back to that water cooling. I'm so easily distracted!

Planning - system for achieving objective: a method of doing something that is worked out in advance.

Being an Amature Modder can be interesting / frustrating / expensive / Ect. Ok planning is not one of my strong suits! I finally went to mount my lower 480 Radiator and because of all the Modding To get the overkill Grill in place, there were multiple stacked layers. I shortened and cleaned up the threads on the screws and they wouldn't bite. I thought they were to short, but it turns out I should have used some thread Dyes on them. Also all the pretty piping seemed to be in the way of the Rad. I found out that if I used elbows on the underside of the pass thru's that it would fit, just barely. That was close! I didn't want to have to redo a bunch of stuff. Damn now I need more fittings. I'm beginning to understand why the Big Boys bitch about the cost of fittings!

Sorry but this seems to be the theme lately. Find something else to do while I wait for parts. I finished the drain line straight out the back of the case with a pass thru.

The lighting may be the only thing subtle in this whole build? I wanted to mount the lighting somewhere that it could angle toward the back of the case. The upper radiator blocks the angle of anything mounted in the front behind the side panel. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I made a shroud to cover upthe upper fans and allow me to angle some of the lights at a 45 degree angle to the back of the case. As usual I stumbled into something good? and unexpected. I was polishing the back of the diamond plate to reflectmore light and cool pattern started to appear. Can you say Deja Vu? The material has some color from the anodizing on the front that looks fairly good.

I bent a strip to mount the lighting to at the angle I want. The front color is actually slightly gold, the picture's doesn't really show the true color. Hey I'm just going for none blurry at this point.

The cover comes down a little lower in the case than I would like, but It wouldn't hide the lighting if It didn't.So there it is, hopefully the better lighting angle will make up for it?

Ok this will never be one of those cases that people say that is so clean! It's as busy as hell on the inside of the case. I have had way to much time on my hands and not enough of the parts that I really needed to finish. It is coming along and I'll use Metallica as an excuse! Heavy Metal is not known for being mild mannered! That's my story and I'm sticken to it.

Here Is something New ! I think they call that a moving part? I wouldn't know, this case has never done this before. I unplugged it immediately and called an exorcist!

I had a pretty productive weekend. just for fun, I redid the final pipes to the GPU's in ridged Copper. I put O rings on the outside in a pattern. I think it looks alright. The pipe was just small enough to fit in my drill, so I was able to polish it like crazy.

I also decided to put the SSD in front of the mother board. This serves multiple purposes, It helps hid a lot of the manky wires that go to the front panel, It's helps with my Corsair advertising and I just think it looks cool. It's cooper! get used to it.

Notice some strange colors in that last picture? I put most / All of the lighting in the case. I really wanted to improve on the previous lighting jobs that I had done.I don't want any direct line of sight on any of the LEDs. I was able to do that unless you are below the case and look up. There are still some light reflections, because of all the shiny stuff. I used 2 separate Hue controllers so I could have more options. From the start me and Sam had decided to be more minimalistic on the lighting. I'm still paying for the sin's of my last build. As a matter of fact I stole one of the Hue Controllers from Bender and it has so many lights that It didn't make much difference.

I set this up in lighting zones. I trimmed as much height off of the radiator / lighting shield as possible. It has a 45 degree place to mount 2 passes of LED's aiming at the components. Then I ran it around the Rad with an angle in the back for 2 passes. I really like how this worked out. with the depth of the Rad in a push/ pull, any lighting mounted in the top front of the case would be partially blocked. the first few pictures is the back zone only.

I'll fix the light leak on the right side of the Rad. I'll have to play with this quite a bit until I'm happy, so don't pay much attention to the colors at this point. Just goofing around to see what it would do. Also the brightness is up high in these pictures. It will most likely be much lower in the final product.

I really like the front to back light separation that I am getting from this setup. Now I'll turn on the front lighting for full volume.

I have to straighten those stupid O rings out a little more. ha ha you always notice the little things after the pictures are done.

I may need some more LED's to light the company Logo's, but I'll hold off on that for a while. When my wife looked at it,she almost made me sleep on the couch because the fans didn't lite up. Damn you can't please every one, can you? Trying to explain to her that this case wasn't really designed to be a lighting show case did no good. She came up with 4 ideas that caused 12 more problems and Finally gave up. Dx

Ya you know what that's for. I went around and made a final check to see if all the fittings were tight. when I got done, I looked over and there was one lonely O ring laying on the work bench? #%*&%## hmmm I wonder which one of those fitting that goes to? After Checking a couple of the last few fittings I had put together, I pulled off one of the O rings and looked at it compared to the extra One. They were not the same exact size - Ohh thank God! it's an extra one from the GPU piping. That had me worried, these Ghost fittings don't like to come apart where they are supposed to so, taking them back apart can be a pain.

I'm just running distilled water for leak testing. I don't want to waste any of my fancy English water to do testing. I'll save you the obligatory pictures of the paper towels while leak testing. Zero leaks which is all part of the plan. I'll get a little Photo flo this week to clear the bubbles and put in the Mayhems ulta pure H20. I'm not quite ready to fire up the whole rig yet, but as you can see I am getting closer.

Hi everyone- The Asus Rush for Gold Case Mod Contest has started voting. They are giving away free mother boards to random voters. I could really use you help! I am up against some very nice builds by pro modders. Thank You All

We thought we would never see this day. Thanks to everyone for your extended support on this build. I Have a better camera arranged in the next week or two, to get some better close ups and Low light shots.

Me and Sam started this just goofing around with a pipe dream of mine to build a big wide case. God i didn't think I would actually build the thing! Thanks to Bill Owen's encouragement we started a build log, when we didn't even have a case? What the Hell were we thinking? Thanks to all the enthusiasts the darn thing took off based on the strength of Sam's renderings. About this time I thought, Man I better do something or this is going to be a one man show! Amazingly with all my Modding hero's looking over my shoulder I did things I never knew that I could. Fear does amazing things. The stars aligned for us on this whole deal and I don't think I could duplicate it with a Chrystal ball. I have gained much more respect for pro Modders, They do amazing things with the pressure of a deadline and their financial well being on the line.

My eternal thanks goes out to Sam, Bill Owen, Ronaldo Buassali, Corsair George, Eddie and Peter at EKWB, Michael woods at Mayhems and all the people at The Mod Zoo. I could have never completed this without all your help!!

I've always loved this picture. Sams rendering on the monitor was done months before I got the case to this point. To be able to come that close to his incredible design made me feel great!

And this is where it all began.

Thanks to everyone here at Maximum PC forum for checking out our project.

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